Today's young children are exposed to a variety of digital technologies in their home and school environments. While the presence of these technologies is increasing in US prekindergarten classrooms, teachers must critically analyze the role these tools will play in the quest to provide early learners with developmentally appropriate practice. The…

The authors compared the discourse of 100 Israeli preschool teachers with a group of children during three book-sharing contexts: reading, reconstruction, and telling. During telling and reconstruction, the teachers used more utterances and questions and referred more to concept of book and to the illustrations. During reading, they referred more…

While movement is critical to young children's development, there is an ongoing debate about the time devoted to teaching movement in early childhood classrooms. Nevertheless, research has established a link between specific precursor motor skills and early literacy development. This study investigated the synergistic effect of practising specific…

The purpose of this study was to describe the characteristics and findings of an early literacy intervention program implemented to facilitate the development of critical emergent literacy skills among children identified as low-income and at-risk in the context of collaborative, pre-kindergarten/Head Start classrooms. Using data from a sample of…

Combining home-school literacy bags with preschool family literature circles provided a strong foundation for family involvement at home and school during this year-long Reading Partners project, and helped parents become essential partners in their children's literacy development. Using home-school literacy bags, children and parents learned…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a federally funded early literacy project that aimed to promote the school readiness skills of preschool-age children from low income families. Through daily, explicit, and systematic instruction, the project targeted to improve preschoolers' oral language skills, phonological awareness,…

The potential impact of increased physical activity on early literacy skills in preschool children has not been sufficiently explored. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a 6 month, low cost, teacher-directed, academic program that delivered existing literacy lessons using physical activity in Head Start…

For young Spanish-English dual language learners (SE-DLLs), early literacy skills, including phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge in Spanish as well as English, are crucial to their reading success. However, there is a lack of research about how SE-DLLs develop early literacy skills, and how their rates of performance can inform…

Increasingly, prekindergarten programs with literacy outcome goals are seeking to implement evidence-based practices to improve results. Such efforts require instructional intervention strategies to engage children as well as strategies to support teacher implementation. Reported is the iterative development of Literacy 3D, an enhanced support…

This multiple baseline design study examined the effects of a Tier 3 early literacy intervention on low-income preschool children's phonological awareness (PA). Seven preschool children who did not make progress on identifying first sounds in words during a previous Tier 2 intervention participated in a more intensive Tier 3 intervention. Children…

Quality literacy instruction in preschool can be critical to the future academic success for all children, but may be even more so for children with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to examine progress in emergent literacy skills of young children with disabilities, compared with their typical peers, in an inclusive preschool setting.…